Capturing the Year in Sports

How Some of 2012's Most Iconic Images Were Snapped

Greg Bull had done his homework. He had seen Gabby Douglas's beam routine enough times to anticipate precisely when she would launch herself in the air so high and for so long that it looked like she might be stuck there. The only problem: He had never actually aced the shot. So when Douglas took the beam during the Olympic all-around competition, the Associated Press photographer positioned himself dead-center and aimed for the exact frame he ended up getting. "I just tried to really concentrate on getting that moment," he said. This time, everything clicked. Douglas ended up winning the all-around gold medal, and Bull's photograph struck a chord with an audience captivated by Douglas's grace. Bull's favorite part of his photo: "The way she's looking straight up in the air. A beam is the width of an iPhone, and the hard part of that trick is she's looking up. I liked that confidence."

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An Alabama fans holds up a large image of his own face, rear, in an attempt to distract the opposing team.
Associated Press

The photographer says this photograph shouldn't exist. Hal Yeager, then with the Birmingham News, usually leaves Alabama basketball games at halftime. But for the Crimson Tide's matchup with Florida on Feb. 14, he stayed for the second half, since the game started an hour earlier than most. Yeager was also sitting in a different place from his normal spot. And, he said, "I quit shooting those guys with the faces a long time ago." But something about this photo made him take another look. It was probably because Jack Blankenship was holding a cut-out poster of his own face. As it turned out, Yeager's shot was such a wild hit on the Internet that Blankenship, the student known as Alabama Face Guy, even made an appearance on Jimmy Fallon's late-night talk show.

This is the way many New York Giants fans now think of their two-time Super Bowl MVP: wearing sweatpants, holding a flashlight and studying a lake in his apartment building. With superstorm Sandy battering the tri-state area, Giants quarterback Eli Manning hunkered down in his Hoboken, N.J., apartment and inspected the damage wearing the casual uniform of everyone else riding out the hurricane. By that time, a crowd had formed in the flooded lobby. There were enough people that Manning says he has no idea which of his neighbors took this surreptitious photo. But not long afterward, the mysterious photographer's work was published as an anonymous tip on the sports gossip website Terez Owens. It was passed around Twitter—including a tweet by the actress Kate Mara, whose family owns the Giants—and Deadspin turned it into the Tumblr blog Eli Manning Looking at Things, now with over 100 reader submissions of the quarterback Photoshopped into everything from Iwo Jima to Mark Sanchez's butt-fumble.

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Manny Pacquiao after being knocked out in the sixth round as Juan Manuel Marquez celebrates during their welterweight bout on Dec. 8.
Getty Images

He sensed a knockout was coming. It was the end of the sixth round in Manny Pacquiao's Dec. 8 fight with Juan Manuel Marquez, and Getty Images photographer Al Bello wanted to pack in as much as possible should one of the fighters go down. In a furious closing flurry, that's exactly what happened: Marquez hit Pacquiao with a right hand to the face, and Pacquiao fell "like someone shot him in the head," Bello said. The referee started the knockout count. Pacquiao didn't move. Several feet away, Bello put himself in position by jumping atop the ring's apron. Marquez climbed the ropes, and as soon as he raised his arms in celebration, Bello fired off three shots. The third one was the keeper. "What you need in a fight like that is a scene-setter, an all-in-one," Bello said. "You need to see what the heck just happened in one photo. What you're looking at is urgency, victory, defeat and desperation." He didn't have time to savor the shot. Bello was allegedly assaulted in the post-fight chaos by members of Pacquiao's camp who took exception to him photographing the fighter on the canvas. Pacquiao adviser Michael Koncz called the situation a "misunderstanding" and apologized to Bello. "I'm very respectful of trainers and boxers—I hold these guys sacred," Bello said. "But I still have to do my job."

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Members of U.S. men's basketball team and their coach Mike Krzyzewski sleeping during Team USA's flight to London.
Kevin Love

The dozen NBA players on the U.S. men's basketball team who interrupted their summer vacations to win an Olympic gold medal also accomplished something else along the way. They turned pictures of each other sleeping into art. Team USA's takeover of Instagram during the Olympics documented pretty much everything they did when they weren't making their opponents look like Wenlock and Mandeville. We learned through Instagram that the team rode Segways in Barcelona and the train in London. Deron Williams even published photographic proof that Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski does yoga. But the real coup was to catch a teammate dozing off. The masterpiece in this emerging genre belonged to Minnesota Timberwolves forward Kevin Love, who managed to get Williams, James Harden, LeBron James, Chris Paul, Russell Westbrook, Anthony Davis, Krzyzewski and all their assorted sleeping accouterment during Team USA's flight to London. Love "swore he was going to sleep!" Williams tweeted afterward. As for his inspiration, Love lets his work speak for itself. The photographer declined to comment.

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